In some ways a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland “let’s put on a show!” movie with lightsaber dildos instead of a barn, Zach and Miri feels like a semi-autobiographical portrait of a nerd who figures out how to be somebody by turning on other nerds for a living. There are even patches of dialogue that seem like they could have been lifted from Smith’s days preparing Clerks…their pornographic exploits opened them up to “a world of possibilities, where plain old people like us could do something special.” Could there be a plainer reference to Smith’s own charmed career path from suburban comic nerd to God of Suburban Comic Nerds?